This was from the first week of March. Had a bad stretch of luck since and been injured, but things are healing up, and I'm hoping to be back out again, soon.
Anyway, as some of you may know, I took the last year off of shooting as a part of my self-imposed "COVID austerity plan." Reasons? The wifey took an elective 20% pay cut and my salary was frozen - and I was effectively the primary caretaker of not only my daughter, but also my wife's parents: so I had to do a bit of self-isolating, too.
We could see reasonably early on that we -very- thankfully had enough resources and would likely make it through without too much impact to our lives. That said, I still didn't feel right about going to training classes and spending money on ammo and/or equipment.... It was a
long year (and most sadly/embarrassingly, I did not devote nearly enough time towards dry-firing), but by march we were finally seeing the first glints light at the end of the tunnel.
So when an instructor-turned-friend hung up his own shingle this year for his private range, I eagerly took a membership slot. Got out on the opening day of the range with my daughter (who also had not shot for well over a year by that point), and then a week later with my long-time shooting buddy.
It was a truly glorious NE-Ohio late-winter/early-spring day: just above freezing but warm under the sun - "...cotton ball clouds drift[ing] across an impossibly blue sky."
My buddy took a few pictures.
^ That is my really dirty vehicle, off the 12-foot shooting tower.
The tower is set back approx. 80 yards from the center firing line, which you can see is just to the right of, following the grindings. It's pictured below --->
And here's my fat ass trying to shoot farther than I'm rated for, on the red VTAC (he recycles his old ones to the private range, as the members this year are more like family than anything) to the right ---->
I'd never shot past the 200 before. And to be honest, I actually didn't know if my rifle was even still zero'ed when we started.
I hit a couple of head-shots at the 100 yard line, thought it fair, and ping'ed a 12" and then a 6" plate at 300 yards, so I decided to push it a little bit more.
Currently, the farthest target is at 1,000 yards, but I don't have the hardware for that, much less the skill!
In addition to 16 shooting stations that increments up to the 1K, there's also a 50-yard, 270-degree berm bank where closer-in work can get done (along with a marked 100 yard increment that's useful for zeroing). That's where my buddy and I spent some time working our pistols, and man, it was rough, more for me than my buddy.
Started off the day pretty much missing all my shots at the 100 yard line with the pistol (freestyle).
Walked up to the 50, and was still getting nothing but air - we were shooting at a combination of a Challenge Targets TDI plate and previous-generation Tac-Strike quarter-scales, so they're reasonably challenging (but also far from being too small for that range). My buddy tuned me up a bit and got me back in the game: 50 rounds later, I was back to ringing it freestyle at the 100, and strong-hand-only at the 50 yard line.
The last 40 or so were a lot of fun, and we did it from the 100, 75, and 50 yard lines.
By the time we finished at the 50 with StrongHO, we both had become so accustomed to what the targets looked like at the 75 and the 100 that we thought we were at the 25 yard line. We actually had to pace it out for ourselves to double check that we weren't mistaking our engagement distances.
It's wonderful what pushing a bit of distance does for one's fundamentals.
Only about 140 rounds fired that day from the pistol, my main range/training 4.5-inch XDm9. That should have taken the gun somewhere over 55,000 rounds, but I've honestly lost count since I last properly logged (I really only do that for classes and serious range-days). So, I decided to just use the day as a reset-point, and call it 55,000 life-fire.
The next time I go out, I should actually be putting in work. I'd like to see how she's holding at the 25 yard line. My biggest regret is that I never realized when I first started shooting in late 2010 that I should have benchmarked the gun's performance when-new. Barrel is still factory, but the gun's other internals are pretty much all Springer Precision.
The carbine saw about 150 rounds or so of mixed action, both from far and close.
Like the pistol, my beater range/training carbine is also nothing special: just a run of the mill 16" BCM ELW profile BFH middy using a 15" KMR (to save weight - I'm not that big up top, and the scope/mount, a Gen 1 Vortex PST 1-4x on Larue SPR-E, is pretty pig-ish - built years ago when I realized after my first full-day class that the LMT MRP CQB16 I bought as my first AR was gonna be a bear to throw around during multi-day classes) on a self-assembled Battle Arms Development Billet Lightweight lower.
For some strange reason, this particular barrel really likes 55 gr. fodder, and I was really having a lot of fun at the 300. By the 4, I was starting to have issues - but I wasn't sure if that was me or the gun/ammo, as when I came home I realized I wasn't on the right holds.
More next time!
